"Yes, but how many polygons?" An artist blog entry with interesting numbers

ultragpu said:
This is the in game model actually, ND always uses LOD 1 Drake model since the model and textures are always loaded in the main memory. They never used any CGI or Zbrush model ingame or cutscene, you can pretty much tell from the hair using sheets of polygons. Only the lighting however might be slightly different to the ingame render.
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I really don't know how they manage to have such high poly models in general gameplay.

What would be the entire Drake model? 40-50k?
 
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The main dragon plus its rider in Lair managed a 150k polygon count if I remember correctly. I presume fight night champions character would sport more polys than Drake too. The amount of polygons went into Drake for a game as detailed as Uncharted is pretty incredible though.
 
ultragpu said:
The main dragon plus its rider in Lair managed a 150k polygon count if I remember correctly.
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That was the source model but it was dynamically downscaled in realtime, sometimes so badly that the wings' leather membranes detached themselves from the limbs. I seriously doubt that any action scenes had poly counts like that.

Notice the difference from tessellation - it's not subdividing polygons, but merging vertices together instead. We can use similar tools to create LOD versions, but they're usually producing better results because they don't have to run in realtime.

34965_0_org.jpg

34961_0_org.jpg


The game's graphics sure didn't age well, either - particularly the lighting is a mess.
 
JB9861 said:
Well games like Gears of War, God of War, and Mass Effect have a lower count than 37k for the main character. I suppose those are somewhat alike in approach.
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Yeah, Marcus Fenix is still about 15k triangles I think.
 
(((interference))) said:
Really?Is this for similar titles or something like a fighting game?
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For many types of games. If you rewind back to early 2005 when it was just the 360, people were trying to get launch titles ready and there wasn't as much time to get everything fine tuned right. Plus we weren't doing as much then as games do now as far as the tech blurbs go, and current games hide poly deficiencies better with various other techniques that weren't used as much in the beginning. So back then some games shipped with models that were, shall we say, less than performance optimal on poly count but with the 360 being a unified setup and games being simpler in tech nature meant we were able to get away with stuff like 30k+ poly heads, etc... Not doable anymore of course as today every cycle counts with so much tech being crammed in current games.
 
JB9861 said:
Well games like Gears of War, God of War, and Mass Effect have a lower count than 37k for the main character. I suppose those are somewhat alike in approach.
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Yea, even Mass Effect which is a character driven RPG doesn't have the fidelity of Uncharted, despite having smaller environments and more limited character movement and animation sets (no jumping etc.). Is that just a limitation of UE3? Or do things like facial animation, dialogue etc take up a lot of overhead (wheras in Uncharted it's all pre-recorded?)

joker454 said:
For many types of games. If you rewind back to early 2005 when it was just the 360, people were trying to get launch titles ready and there wasn't as much time to get everything fine tuned right. Plus we weren't doing as much then as games do now as far as the tech blurbs go, and current games hide poly deficiencies better with various other techniques that weren't used as much in the beginning. So back then some games shipped with models that were, shall we say, less than performance optimal on poly count but with the 360 being a unified setup and games being simpler in tech nature meant we were able to get away with stuff like 30k+ poly heads, etc... Not doable anymore of course as today every cycle counts with so much tech being crammed in current games.
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I get what you're saying, things like the ridiculously huge crowds in Kameo or extreme hi res textures in Perfect Dark etc. as these early games did much less with shaders and lighting.

But I can't seem to recall a third person adventure/action game with as detailed a player character as Uncharted?
 
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(((interference))) said:
But I can't seem to recall a third person adventure/action game with as detailed a player character as Uncharted?
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Well TR: Underworld comes to mind, the animation is definitely up there (eventhough I personally think some of the animations are too fast and that makes it look odd sometimes) and the poly count for Lara is pretty high as well (IIRC I remember a dev once mentioning 33k for the model with default costume ie. shorts with sleeveless top, without guns).
 
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nightshade said:
Well TR: Underworld comes to mind, the animation is definitely up there (eventhough I personally think some of the animations are too fast and that makes it look odd sometimes) and the poly count for Lara is pretty high as well (IIRC I remember a dev once mentioning 33k for the default costume ie. shorts with sleeveless top, without guns).
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:smile: You know I was going to suggest TR too, but I'd only played the demo and wasn't sure I was remembering correctly so didn't.
 
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